u/farmlite

I have a ~600 gallon pond that has about 7 1-year old koi in it, a waterfall filter fountain, a couple of lilies. I bought my house last year and my pond came with it. I'm not sure how to maintain it well. I have what I thought was a great local pond store, but their advice does not seem to help my problems. This spring, I cleaned out all the debris, 95% of the sludge, and did a partial water change. My well water is a little basic. My pond continues to test very basic (above 8.5). I did have an algae problem at first, but now I use an algicide weekly per the pond store. The pond store also told me to add salt to 1.5% which is where I'm at now. Algae is under control. Water is murkey, so they gave me a floculent. The two fish that I bought from them died after 4 days, no discernable cause other than either pH or floculant. Now my pond is creating bubble bath bubbles (I'm thinking due to the floculent). I still have super high pH.

I'm not sure about my filter condition. It has one green pad and about 30 bio balls. I don't usually have excessive fish food. I'm open to all suggestions.

I would like to lower my pH permanently and have clearer water.

I'm a new pool owner, 20x24 concrete pool. Located in CT. In the fall, the pool company put a tarp over it and some chemicals in it and probably did some other things like plugs.

So far this summer, they took off the cover and unplugged some stuff, poured some chemicals. The water was still murkey, so they came back and removed 25% of the leaves (and put them in the garden bed). Then my filter kept clogging even after backwash, so they talked me through how to disassemble and clean. It still seems to clog.

They came back a 3rd time and removed about half of the leaves and added even more chlorine (about 6 gallons this week). It still clogs and I can't keep it running. I'm about $800 in to pool opening this year with the filter not working and no hope of swimming.

Should I find a new pool company or is this normal?